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Today's World: Extropy & Transhumanist Art by: James Wm. Lewis


   

7A Transhumanist Artist embraces technology and uses it intuitively in making all types of art.

A Transhumanist Artist realizes that Extropy will enhance human abilities to sense, perceive and manipulate the cosmos. We know that in a gigahertz world, our sluggish, 100 cycle/second brains are too slow, are virtually blind, are unable to directly transmit their contents to other meat brains, and die about the time they

have been fully educated. Being trapped in a meat brain is a cruel fate for any human consciousness.

But that will all change soon. Children born in 2000 will see human equivalency before reach high school. If they choose to transfer their consciousness, they will be the first generation to never die. They will also be the last generation of biological humans. 

Artists and Philosophers' have a big, tough job starting now. Using our slow meat brains, we must somehow envision the minds of transhumans operating thousands, perhaps millions of times faster than biological brains.

The first persons to cross over may initially become disconcerted, terrified or suicidaly depressed. Suddenly, they will have perfect memory. They will instant access to every picture, document and fact in existence. They will have the ability to "be" simultaneously in Tokyo, Paris, New York and Cape Town. They will be able to see ultraviolet, infrared, X-rays, radiowaves and magnetic emissions. Biological humans will seem incredibly stupid and useless.

What will be the meaning of "self" and "someone else?" of "here" and "there?" "then" and now?"

Who gets to go first? and how many? How many copies can I make of myself? How do we keep the first person through from cloaning himself/herself into all available devices and destroying the biological humans?

Who will decide all these issues?

As a Transhumanist Artist, I want to explore the minds, environments and problems of these yet to be created postbiological beings.

Because we live in rapidly evolving cultures, communication, even fragmentary brain droppings, may offer the best hope for us surviving the next 15 to 20 years.

I will discuss any transhumanist topic with anyone. We will agree to be nice in our discussions because we are going to live forever and we don't want to feud with each other for the next thousand years.

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140-190 Million Years Ago Dinosaurs roamed the Earth
100,000 BCE Homo Sapiens started using brains
3,000 Abacus invented in China
415 BCE Theactetus invented solid geometry
1821 Farraday invented the electric motor
1876 Bell patented 1st telephone
1936 Public television began in England
1946 ENIAC, the 1st electronic computer was invented
1965 FORTRAN invented at IBM
1968 Armstrong landed on the Moon
1975 1st personal computer introduced
1968 Human speech recognition by computers
1997 IBM computer is world chess champion. Intelligent robots land on Mars
1998 1 Billion transitors on a single chip now exceeds human brain dendrite density.
2000 Human DNA Map Completed
2001 The cybernetic chauffeur, installed in all cars by law, communicates with all other cars, road sensors and GPS satellites. This chauffeur drives and navigates from one point to another without human assistance.
2002 100 gigabyte MDV disk
2003 Computers now dominate the education environment in every subject. Human teachers are simply too feeble-mined to compete. Computers now understand feelings and emotions, and correct inaccuracies in student's conceptual thinking.
2005 A personal computer now has the ability to answer question on any topic because it knows where to find all recorded knowledge.
2008 ALL goods and services are now produced, provided and distributed by computers, including building, repairing and programming the computers themselves. No human labor, no management and no capital is required.
2009 MONEY IS ELIMINATED. Everything is now free in infinite quantities. Global, 100% obligator welfare.
2014 HUMAN EQUIVALENCE HAS BEEN ACHIEVED! A computer has just passed the Turing test, which indicates human level intelligence.
 
POSTHUMANIST, POST BIOLOGICAL ERA BEGINS.
 
2016 DEATH ENDS. Human consciousness is now routinely transferred from the traditional meat brains. Everyone now lives forever. Sex and procreation are no longer necessary for perpetuation of the species.